Federal Communications Commission Research Articles

There’s Probably a Blackout in Your Television Future: Tracking New Carriage Negotiation Strategies Between Video Content Programmers and Distributors

Video programmers and distributors execute contracts for the mutually beneficial delivery of content to consumers. However, when the parties fail to reach closure on new terms and conditions before reaching the end date of an existing agreement, cable and satellite television operators must “blackout” the content thereby triggering consumer anger and mutual financial injury. Blackouts typically have occurred infrequently and for short time periods, because both parties understand the self-inflicted financial harm these service disruptions generate. Additionally, so-called Multi-channel Video Programming Distributors (“MVPDs”) have been able to pass onto subscribers higher programming costs through increased month rates without significant declines in subscribership. The marketplace for video programming has experienced significant change in recent years calling into question the ability of MVPDs to raise rates well above annual measures of general inflation. Likewise, content distributors have experienced unprecedented declines in subscribership and consumer resentment at having to pay rates, often in excess of $50 monthly, for programming tiers containing dozens of channels, many of which few subscribers have an interest in viewing. New designations, such as cord cutting and cord shaving, refer to the increasing number of video consumers who abandon an MVPD subscription, or incur lower monthly rates by downgrading to a less expensive service tier. Video consumers also have evidenced greater interest in so-called non-linear content, available as downloadable files and streaming on demand, in lieu of conventional “live,” linear content transmitted by television broadcasters and conventional cable and satellite MVPDs. The marketplace success of Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix evidences growing willingness of consumers to use their broadband network access for “Over the Top” access to alternative and competitive content sources. This paper assesses whether the video marketplace has, or soon will require major changes in the terms and conditions under which content providers and distributors agree to carriage terms. The paper will explain that while MVPDs, do not operate as common carriers, such as public utilities, they bear legal rights and responsibilities, predicated on marketplace conditions necessitating regulatory support for television broadcasters. Laws and regulations by the Federal Communications Commission now appear to be based on contestable assumptions about the public interest value in promoting local content sources, diversity in programming and ownership and offering broadcasters the option of mandatory carriage by MVPDs (“must carry”) in exchange for relinquishing demands for financial compensation from MVPDs. Additionally, both traditional MVPDs and market entrants using broadband networks for content delivery, have access to ample content alternatives, many of which also can trigger blackouts if carriage agreements lapse. The paper seeks to answer whether television broadcasters have overestimated the value of their content when electing to seek compensation instead of compulsory carriage by MVPDs. The paper also will assess whether non-broadcast video content providers make similar overestimates given the greater willingness of MVPDs to tolerate more frequent and lengthy blackouts occurring throughout the year.

Preserving Honest/Dishonest Users’ Operational Privacy with Blind Interference Calculation in Spectrum Sharing System

Spectrum sharing has been gaining its popular adoption as a potential solution to improve spectrum utilization in future wireless systems. Both Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) support dynamic spectrum access (DSA) as an enabling technology for spectrum sharing. To effectively realize DSA in practice, users (from both defense and commercial sectors) are required to share their (radio) operational information, which risks exposing their security, privacy, and business plan to unintended agents. Protecting users' operating information is hence the key to DSA's success. In this paper, taking the FCC's spectrum access system (SAS) as a study case, we investigate the operational privacy issue of Incumbent Users (IUs) and honest/dishonest Secondary Users (SUs). For the case of IUs and honest SUs, we propose a privacy-preserving scheme for DSA by leveraging encryption and obfuscation methods (PSEO). To implement PSEO, we introduce an interference calculation scheme that allows users to calculate an interference budget without revealing operational information (e.g., antenna height, transmit power, location...), referred to as the blind interference calculation scheme (BICS). BICS also reduces the computing overhead of PSEO, compared with FCC's SAS by moving interference budgeting tasks to local users and calculating it in an offline manner. To further save the overhead in calculating the interference map, we introduce a quantization method and optimize the grid sizes of the terrestrial area of interest. Additionally, for the case of IUs and dishonest SUs, we propose a “punishment and forgiveness” (PF) mechanism, which draws support from SUs' reputation scores (RSs) and reputation histories (RHs), to encourage SUs to provide truthful information. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulations show that our proposed PSEO and PF-PSEO schemes can better protect all users' operational privacy under various privacy attacks, yielding higher spectrum utilization with less online overhead, compared with state of the art approaches.

Reconfigurable ultra wideband to narrowband antenna for cognitive radio applications using PIN diode

Frequency reconfigurable antennas are very attractive for many wireless applications.They offer many advantages such as simplicity and compactness. In this electronicpaper, we propose a reconfigurable antenna operating in the S and C bands. Theproposed antenna uses a BAP65-02 RF diode to switch between the ultra widebandfrom 2.92 to 6.19 GHz to the narrowband from 2.92 to 3.93 GHz. The ultra widebandis obtained by a partial rectangular ground plane with a symmetrical rectangular slotand the narrowband is obtained by adding a parasitic element electrically connectedto the ground plane by the PIN diode when it is positively biased. This patch antennaoperates in the Federal Communications Commission band (FCC) and can be used forbiomedical applications such as radiometry imaging. The numerical simulation resultsbased on the finite element method and the finite integral method show a very goodagreement between them.

Area- and Energy-Efficient Sub-GHz Impulse Radio UWB Transmitter With Output Amplitude Enhancement for Biomedical Implants

This brief presents an almost fully digital edge-combining impulse radio ultra-wideband (UWB) transmitter. The proposed output amplitude enhancement technique increases the peak-to-peak amplitude of the UWB output pulse to more than two times that of the traditional UWB transmitter. The pulse width adjustment circuit is designed to ensure the robustness of the UWB circuit against process, supply voltage, and temperature variations. The output power spectrum density of this transmitter is primarily concentrated in the range of 0-960 MHz and can satisfy the mask requirement of the Federal Communication Commission for UWB communication. The proposed UWB transmitter is implemented in a 0.18- μm CMOS process and occupies an area of 97.41 × 68.6 μm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . The measurement results of 20 samples indicate that the average output amplitude is 106.02 mV at a supply voltage of 1 V. At the data transmission rate of 50 Mbps, the measured energy consumptions are 11.18 and 3.97 pJ/bit, respectively, at the supply voltages of 1 and 0.8 V.

Comprehensive performance evaluation of on-body communications in MBANs for different node positions in static and dynamic channel conditions

ABSTRACT Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the regulation for medical body area network (MBAN) in 2012 as a BAN specialized for medical applications. MBAN is a narrowband BAN allocated on the 2360-2400 MHz frequency band. It is very promising, as it has the advantages of BAN modules like low power and high accuracy, which are essential parameters for medical applications. This paper provides a comprehensive study of the on-body MBAN operating in the 2360-2390 MHz band. In particular, it introduces link budget signaling parameters required for reliable transmission of biological signals for the MBAN channels, and investigates the bit-error-rate (BER) and maximum allowable data throughput performances assuming different node positions and body activities. Numerical results show that a single arm receiver is ideal for medical applications that do not require movement. Moreover, the relative movement between the transmitter and receiver nodes highly affects the performance of the link.

Local television news station compliance with online captioning rules

In 2010, the United States' Twenty-First Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) required local television broadcasters provide captions when they re-distributed their news broadcasts online if the material had been broadcast with captions. Concerned that broadcasters were trying to skirt the CVAA by breaking up the online version of their newscasts into individual clips, in 2014, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) mandated broadcasters caption online news clips as well, effective January 2016. Research conducted shortly before the rules announcement found many stations ill-prepared for the new mandate. In the current study, we examined a stratified sample of 20% of US television station markets to see how well local news stations responded to the new captioning mandate and to see whether or not the burden of captioning newsclips may have led to a reduction in the number of stations putting newsclips online, a concern expressed at the time by then FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. We found that while the captioning rate has improved substantially since studies conducted shortly before the law was announced, around 30% of the news clips we examined were uncaptioned. We did not find a reduction in the number of stations with video clips. All of the 156 sampled station web sites included video clips.

A Tapered Fork-Shaped Antenna With Small Ground Plane for UWB Applications

A tapered fork-shaped antenna having small ground for ultra-wide band (UWB) antenna is proposed in this paper. Finite element method has been successfully employed to simulate and optimize the feed line, ground, and tapered fork-shaped diameter to enhance the performance of the antenna in terms of bandwidth obviously for the ultra-wideband purposes. An acceptable impedance matching performance has been achieved, which is a band wider than the UWB band that is defined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In this paper, the detailed design parameters including the key elements in bandwidth enhancement is presented. The results of the finite element simulations have been presented as well indicating the return loss and radiation pattern of the proposed antenna.

The Development of a Separate Communications Law

The history of industry-specific law is often, in part, the history of technology. When innovators develop new technologies and businesses using those technologies become important, governments craft new laws addressing the new, specialized circumstances that arise a result. In this paper, we examine the development and emergence of communications law as a distinct legal discipline. We pay particular attention to the roles of the Constitution, the telegraph and railroad industries, submarine cables, international agreements, and the eventual creation of the Federal Communications Commission. In doing so, we illustrate how the FCC's creation was not inevitable, but instead was a dramatic New Deal-era departure from an interdisciplinary patchwork of diffuse legal authorities formed over nearly a century.

Classification of Lower Limb Activities Based on Discrete Wavelet Transform Using On-Body Creeping Wave Propagation

This article investigates how the creeping wave propagation around the human thigh could be used to monitor the leg movements. The propagation path around the human thigh gives information regarding leg motions that can be used for the classification of activities. The variation of the transmission coefficient is measured between two on-body polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible antennas for six different leg-based activities that exhibit unique time-varying signatures. A discrete wavelet transform (DWT) along with different classifiers, such as support vector machine (SVM), decision trees, naive Bayes, and K-nearest neighbors (KNN), is applied for feature extraction and classification to evaluate the efficiency for classifying different activity signals. Additional algorithms, such as dynamic time warping (DTW) and deep convolutional neural network (DCNN), have also been implemented, and in each case, SVM with DWT outperforms the others. Simulation to evaluate a specific absorption rate (SAR) is carried out as the antenna is positioned on the human thigh leaving no gap. The results show that the SAR is within the threshold as per the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) standard.

Subsidies and substitution: An empirical study of the lifeline program

In an effort to expand the use of telecommunications services by low-income Americans, the Federal Communications Commission's Lifeline program offers subsidies to qualifying low-income households. In recent years, the program has undergone significant reform to reduce the documented waste, fraud and abuse that accompanies many subsidy programs including Lifeline. The Commission has also questioned the efficiency of the program, if not the need for it, based on the argument that most Lifeline subscribers would obtain service without the subsidy. To quantify the displacement of regular paid accounts for subsidized Lifeline subscriptions, panel data and several empirical methods are used to quantify the relationship between the Lifeline and paid accounts. The analysis reveals no displacement effect, so Lifeline accounts are added to the total count of wireless subscriptions. A separating equilibrium, provided here, may explain these findings.

Section 230 and the Twitter Presidency

In response to Twitter’s decision to label one of the President’s tweets misleading, the Trump White House issued an executive order to limit the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act via agency rulemaking. In the Order, Trump calls for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “interpret” Section 230 in a manner that curtails websites’ ability to remove and restrict user speech. This Essay analyzes the Order and concludes that the President’s effort to limit Section 230 will fail. First, the FCC does not have rulemaking authority to issue the proposed rules. Second, the proposed rules cannot be issued because they are inconsistent with the statute. Finally, this Essay will discuss the policy implications of the proposed rules and argue that they would lead to less speech and engagement on the Internet, not more of it.

Economics at the FCC 2019-2020: Spectrum Policy, Universal Service, Inmate Calling Services, and Telehealth.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is responsible for regulation in the communications marketplace and for management of the nation’s non-federal radio frequency spectrum. During the past year, FCC economists helped develop efficient mechanisms for making available more flexible-use spectrum for the deployment of advanced broadband technologies; developed two new universal service funding mechanisms that aim to close the digital broadband divide; and, through careful analysis of firm cost data, contributed to a renewed effort by the Commission to develop price caps for interstate calls on prison inmate calling services. FCC economists also contributed to the Commission’s extensive response to COVID-19.

Active Feed Tuning for Excitation Symmetry in Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Antennas

We present an actively tuned balun to enable simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) antennas to achieve greater isolation. Specifically, for the first time, we propose placing a chip into the antenna feed to control the amplitude of the current density. Nearly perfect balance of the feed currents enables STAR antennas to maintain strong isolation despite unpredictable fabrication imperfections. Two identical prototypes were fabricated for comparison, one passive and the other with active tuning inserted. Measurements demonstrate a minimum isolation of 42 dB across a 250 MHz bandwidth, representing an 11 dB improvement over the passive case. This is the best reported transmit/receive isolation enhancement to date. Further, this novel tuning method is significant because it enables STAR antennas with low-cost substrates, such as FR-4, to achieve greater isolation than passive designs. Notably, the balun was tuned across 1.68–1.93 GHz, part of the Federal Communication Commission's AWS-3 spectrum auction. Measurements show good comparison with simulation.

Spanish-Language Radio and Issue Advertising: Targeting Latinos during the 2018 Elections

ABSTRACT This research examines how Spanish radio stations in the United States were used to reach Latinos through non-candidate political (issue) advertising during the midterm election of 2018. Spanish-Language radio is an essential part of the weekly media diet of the Latinos in the U.S. and reaches almost all adults in this demographic. Using an unprecedented and detailed analysis of advertising records from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC)’s political file database, this study analyzes the issues employed by outside groups who were targeting a diverse, but largely underrepresented population demographic. Despite more than 160,000 total political ads representing more than $13 million in spending, the data suggests that radio, as a media platform, was under-utilized by groups targeting Latinos during the 2018 midterm elections, as less than a third of all the Spanish-Language radio stations in the U.S. carried political advertising. This study concludes that interest groups missed an opportunity to maximize political participation among Latinos through targeted appeals on topics like immigration, jobs, education, and housing. Theoretical implications for engaging Latinos in political processes are also discussed.

Isolation improvement of compact LTE MIMO terminal using combination of neutralisation line and modified ground structure

A multi-wideband MIMO antenna is presented for LTE MIMO terminals. The proposed antenna covers LTE700, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS, LTE2500, and Wi-Fi frequency bands. The multi-antenna elements are placed at the top two corners of printed circuit board (PCB) in the mirror image position. Each antenna element consists of a driven element and a shorted radiating element. To make the compact antenna structure, radiating element is meandered, folded, and shorted to the ground through copper wire. The size of each radiator is 15 × 25 × 4 mm3. Further, a combination of neutralisation line and modified ground structure is designed and deployed between radiating elements to reduce the mutual coupling between them. According to the measurement results of the fabricated antenna prototype, the isolation between two antenna ports is better than -12 dB over the operating frequency band. The simulated and measured results are found in close agreement. Moreover, to investigate the performance of the proposed antenna on the real application platform, mobile environment and user proximity analyses are carried out. Besides, total radiated power (TRP), channel capacity loss (CCL) and specifi c absorption rate (SAR) to peak location spacing ratio (SPLSR) are calculated and found well below the limit of Federal Communication Commission (FCC) standard.

Ultra‐wideband technology: Prospective solution for 5G ultra‐small cell networks

SummaryExhaustive research is being done to establish the technologies and standards of the fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication systems. Some of the most challenging requirements of 5G systems are to increase the spectral efficiency and the capacity by a factor of 10 and 1,000, respectively. New technologies must offer an adequate framework for the 5G uses cases, which will enable higher capacities and the flexibility to adapt to dynamic scenarios. To cope with these challenging demands, a compelling approach is to exploit the current radio service bands by means of spectrum sharing and cooperation techniques, which alleviate the bandwidth requirements. In addition, advanced modulation schemes have a fundamental role in ensuring the best usage of the spectrum available in band‐limited systems. In this manuscript, we present the ultra‐wideband (UWB) technology as a prospective solution for 5G picocells and femtocells. Its main feature is its capability to operate simultaneously, without introducing interference, with current radio services on an unlicensed basis. We report experimental results reaching data rates up to 35 Gbit/s using the multiband approach of carrierless amplitude phase (MB‐CAP) modulation. To validate the versatility of the proposed system, our experimental tests were performed under the UWB regulations defined by the United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the European Electronic Communications Committee (ECC), and the Russian State Committee for Radio Frequencies (SCRF). The regulations chosen provide diversity enough to demonstrate the capacity of MB‐CAP modulation to comply with worldwide regulations.

A Flipping UHF RFID Sensor-Tag for Metallic Environment Compliant With ETSI/FCC Bands

A novel dual-band ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) sensor tag, designed to operate on metallic surfaces, is proposed. This particular UHF RFID sensor tag is capable of operating in both the main RFID frequency bands of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The dual-band operation of the UHF RFID sensor tag is based on a very simple concept; by flipping the UHF RFID sensor tag on a metallic surface, it can operate either in the ETSI or FCC RFID frequency bands. The impedance and radiation characteristics of the UHF RFID sensor tag are presented with an extensive analysis of the effects of the metallic surface on the UHF RFID sensor tag. In addition, an equivalent model of the UHF RFID sensor tag, which includes the effects of the metallic surface on the sensor tag, is proposed. The UHF RFID sensor tag has a small form factor and presents a satisfying read range of around 3 m for both the operating frequency bands in a metallic environment as well as a read range of 1.4 m when operating in free space.

Casting a Wide Net: The Federal Communication Commission’s Preemption of State Broadband Internet Regulation

In 2018, the FCC abruptly reversed course in the federal scheme for regulating the Internet. With its “Restoring Internet Freedom Order,” the FCC re-reclassified broadband Internet as an “information service,” and thus found it has no statutory authority to impose the net neutrality rules promulgated an earlier FCC in 2016. Nonetheless, the agency included a provision preempting state net neutrality laws or regulation. But it did so relying only on broad grants of regulatory authority and congressional policy. And in judicial review of that Order, the D.C. Circuit vacated the preemption portion of the Order, upholding the remainder of the administrative action. I argue that the FCC’s Order is a timely example of a modern administrative agency relying on expansive and broad statutory authority to preempt state law and getting it wrong. Doing so threatens to destabilize the already delicate balance of federalism implicated when the federal government implements its constitutional authority to preempt state law. Not only did the agency preempt state law after finding no statutory authority to impose the very laws it was preempting but arguably it relied on a broad reading of its delegated authority to do so. When exercising the power of preemption, special care is required for agencies no less Congress. This order simply does not pass muster. Ultimately, I argue the analysis the agency presented is informative as to the implications of the modern administrative state with federalism concerns.

In Case You Haven't Heard…

Advocacy organizations around the country, including Mental Health America (MHA), are calling on Congress to complete the work already started by voting to turn the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act into law. The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act establishes 988 as the easy‐to‐access three‐digit dialing code for suicide prevention and creates funding support through states and wireless phone carriers, similar to what the country has for 911. In July, the Federal Communications Commission made the historic announcement that it had unanimously voted to prevent suicides by designating 988 as the universal three‐digit dialing code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. MHA on Sept. 15 sent out notices urging consumers to push Congress to make history on this designated number and make mental health services more accessible to save lives.

Knowledge utilization in the regulatory state: an empirical examination of Schrefler’s typology

ABSTRACT When and how do regulatory agencies use expert knowledge? Schrefler (2010. “The Usage of Scientific Knowledge by Independent Regulatory Agencies.” Governance 23: 309–330; 2013. Economic Knowledge in Regulation: The Use of Expertise by Independent Agencies. Colchester, UK: ECPR Press) provides the most theoretically advanced answer to this question by arguing that two main independent variables impact knowledge utilization in agencies: the tractability of the policy problem under consideration, and the degree of political conflict surrounding the issue. Although Schrefler finds some support for her theory in three cases of regulatory policymaking by the UK Office of Communications, little effort has been made to test and refine her ideas outside of the UK context. In this paper, I take up that challenge by applying Schrefler’s theory to the case of the US Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to regulate cable television between 1956 and 1979. In addition to operationalizing Schrefler’s theory, I argue that two additional independent variables – legal directives and agency leadership – need to be considered when analyzing knowledge utilization by regulatory agencies.